5th Day of Christmas: A Gift Guide for Your Boyfriend

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I’m sharing my third and final gift guide of the year as part of my 12 Days of Christmas blog posts today! I've saved the trickiest to last which is, predictably, a gift guide for your boyfriend. I know it’s a cliche but men really are so hard to buy for, at least in my experience. But I’ve tried to put an edit of gifts together that I think most people would like, but it might be slightly biased towards my boyfriend as some of the things in these photos are things that I’ve bought him in the past…

As always, starting with books! I’ve bought Sam 2/3 of the books here in the past, the Monkman and Seagull Quiz Bookand the 101 Weekends in Europe Book. The former is probably only going to work as a gift if you and your boyfriend like University Challenge as much as me and Sam do but the latter is a great present for all in my opinion, especially if you like to travel together. The third book, Homo Deus, is the sequel to Sapiens but I’ve included this one because, firstly, I’ve lent Sapiens out to someone else, and, secondly, lots of people have already read it and don’t know that this sequel exists. Sapiens is subtitled ‘A Brief History of Humankind’ and that’s basically what it is. Despite this slightly scary subtitle, it's surprisingly easy and enjoyable to read and I don’t know anyone who’s read it and doesn’t like it. I’m yet to read the sequel but I think it takes a similar format to Sapiens, writing about the future of humankind instead.

My next category in these posts is usually skincare/beauty and although there are products in this category that you can buy for men, I’m not very clued up on them so I’m not going to even try and attempt to cover them. So rather, let’s just move on to the other miscellaneous items in this photo. I’ve included Nirvana’s Nevermind album on vinyl here (Sam actually bought me this for my birthday a couple of years ago) and if your boyfriend does have a record player, a vinyl is a really great gift to them. You can make it personal, choosing one you both like or associate with a certain memory, plus they’re really easy to wrap (I’m joking but I’m also not joking). If they don’t have a record player then this one isn’t really an option- if your budget is a little bit higher than mine, you could even get them a record player if you think that’s something they’d like?

Next up is something else that has come back into fashion in recent years, the film camera. If you’ve read my blog before, you probably know how much I love film photography. I’m not even massively into photography generally but I love the simplicity and spontaneity of film photography and obviously the way in which the images look as well. Film cameras can vary from £5-£500 so whatever your budget, this is a present that could work from your boyfriend. Do your research on the best film cameras within your budget but, in my experience so far, the best one is the Olympus MJU II, which vary in price from about £50-£250 depending on how lucky you are on eBay.

Finally, I’ve included this set of general knowledge quiz cards. As mentioned before, Sam and I are embarrassingly into quiz shows (especially University Challenge) so we’ve had a lot of fun using these since he bought me them a couple of years ago. If you and your boyfriend aren’t as into quizzing though, a game of some sort could still be a good idea. Whether you only use it over the Christmas holidays or play with it throughout the year, it’s a nice thing you can do together and you can make it particularly thoughtful if you find one to do with their interests.

Something I haven’t included in these photos but that is always a great idea is a scrapbook or even just a framed photo of you two together. Sam’s born in November and I’m born in January so we always set a fairly low budget for Christmas so a personal gift like this can be really nice without breaking the bank.